Limitations

Some of my digital art work

This past April and during November last year I write a poem a day without difficulty. I wrote in esponse to prompts, Last September, some friends and I committed to posting a poem a day on Facebook, and again, I wrote a poem a day. I had made a commitment, and I followed through.

I wrote without expectations. Without expecting that all the poems would be great, or even good, though some of them were. Without expecting the subjects would be serious. Without expecting that they would rhyme or that they wouldn't. I simply wrote.

I don't usually write either horror, about devils and ghouls and the like. Yet I'm writing a long, epic perhaps, narrative poem about a warrior who goes down to hell to avenge his slain fellows. I'm writing this for an online class in mythic structure, and I started the first part simply placing my fingers on the keyboard and starting.

One day several weeks ago I was driving along Route 495 when I spotted a carcass of some kind on the median. A little further on I spotted a mattress on the right side of the road. "These would make for a great writing prompt," I thought to myself. "Write a story with the mattress and the carcass." By the time I arrived at my destination, a story had sprung to mind, one involving a dead body and a blanket. I wrote it as a flash piece, but it feels as if it could be the start of a novel.

I don't usually write long poems, horror, or fantasies like the one about the dead bodies.  They're outside my comfort zone. But I'm limiting myself by not pushing my boundaries.

For years, I avoided writing fiction, telling myself I couldn't, wasn't interested, or whatever. Then one day I stumbled into a writing forum where I had to write both fiction and poetry. I really liked the writing forum, so I wrote my first fiction, a short story.

I'm still writing. I can do it. And I can do it because I've stopped telling myself I can't.

What limitations are you imposing on yourself? Try tossing them out the window and reaching for the sky.

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